“Who was the mysterious Madame de Mentou? And how did she become such an expert teacher in many different art forms? These are the questions which the writer Thomas Fenman addresses in a brief memoir which was written a few months before his death. Fenman’s puzzling memoir is now published for the first time; Michael Allen provides a scholarly introduction.”

To really round this post-modern literary treat off, Allen also appears to have published a pseudonymous spoofed lit-crit study of the novella under the pen-name R. Gowan Haverges, which looks a lot like an anagram to me. “Grow a grave, Shane”?